We've been in Playtesting Season for a while now, and every new revision is guaranteed to have at least one thing that you personally think is extremely stupid and bad. Many have wondered, is this just a lack of competence on display? Is this what happens when you base all your decisions on a popularity vote? Or what? And I'm here to not entirely answer that question. Because c'mon. I'm not a mind reader. What I'm here to do is examine a little piece of theory.
D&D has pretty much always, and definitely recently, prided itself on its flexibility. Every book has blurbs about "you should ignore rules you don't like," and "you should change the rules to better fit your play group," and "the rules serve you," and so on. But look. Aren't those platitudes?
Didn't this edition receive something like two years of playtesting? Weren't there dozens of people working on it? People with game design schooling? Doesn't it come from a long history of trials and errors, revisions and iterations? Wouldn't it be hubris for any DM to think they're smarter than this team?
But how many 5e games have you played where it's even possible for the DM to avoid homebrewing? I can't think of any. And furthermore, isn't it more fun to homebrew, at least a little? Don't DMs get a kick out of it? Don't players enjoy it? Doesn't it make games feel more real, feel more personal, and even feel more fair? Doesn't it make each new campaign that little bit more exciting? I think the designers know this. That's why they keep telling you to hack the game! But they've given DMs a precision-engineered machine, built by dozens of the most skilled hands and minds in the industry, and they're telling you to get in there with a screwdriver and just mess around with this thing that you could never hope to create yourself (after all, isn't that why you buy the books?), and like, no? I'm not comfy doing that! I'll break something!!
Enter the Cursed Rules.
We've all seen 'em. The Shield Master order-of-operations thing. The crappy scaling of Martial Arts damage. Freaking True Strike. There are plenty of Cursed Rules. And when you encounter one of these Cursed Rules, it makes you question the sanity of the designers of this game. It makes you question their skills. Their rationale. Whether they even played the game. And that's a good thing.
These people designed freaking True Strike. Even an amateur like me can see that True Strike is hot garbage, so maybe this thing isn't as perfect as it seemed. Maybe it's actually very flawed. I can hack a thing that's flawed. What am I gonna do, make it worse? People still love it, even though it's got freaking True Strike in it, so what are the odds I'm really going to ruin it with whatever thing I choose to do?
Now, am I saying the D&D design team are some kind of Machiavellian 4D-chess-playing geniuses who intentionally put in Cursed Rules for this purpose? No, c'mon, I'm not a mind reader. We've been over this! But I kinda think the game might be worse without Cursed Rules in it. What do you think?
Personally, I think that any rules that appear in a book should be functional. I'm fine with house rules, especially when it comes to customizing something for a particular game, but players and GMs should not be asked to come up with their own homebrew just to make a feat or spell into something that's actually functional. That's not "encouraging creativity," that's just the writers and editors failing to do their actual jobs. It's like Microsoft's infamous tendency to take known bugs in their programs and simply label them as "features" instead of fixing them.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
But they've given DMs a precision-engineered machine, built by dozens of the most skilled hands and minds in the industry, and they're telling you to get in there with a screwdriver and just mess around with this thing that you could never hope to create yourself (after all, isn't that why you buy the books?), and like, no? I'm not comfy doing that! I'll break something!!
I so do not see 5e as that, lol. I think I could write the whole game better. I bought the books because I needed to know what we were going to be using and adjust to it, since I voted to do so. I have created my own games. I've used the darn stuff they offered for free and built stuff on top of it and from it and taken it apart and put it back together a 100 times easily.
I kinda think the game might be worse without Cursed Rules in it. What do you think?
I think the rules were what they came up with at the time, and they have to deal with the degree of inertia and acceptance that has struck them.
I think creating a game of this size, in corporate structure, is a nightmare that never ends. I think the inherent biases of the folks involved lead them to overlook things and that like me they are curious to try new things out because nothing is more boring to a game designer than the "standard" "plain" "commonplace". Like most engineers, there is always an ith to fix something -- but you want to fix a new something, not really have to deal with the crap you figure is settled. D&D is very trapped by its own history in a lot of design senses, and then it is trapped by the different ways that previous design goals influenced the players. by their position and role as the market leader and by their position and role as the default, the most common point of entry and the most common point of reference. I think this design team is trapped by their own success, since a chunk of this team is the same folks who did the 2014 books.
So I don't think they created the cured rules to make folks homebrew -- I think they created them because they didn't have a better idea that they liked and that would fit with what they think of as "the game" at the time.
I am someone who loves to homebrew. I am a game mechanics nerd -- I collect the "systems and sub systems". I look at ethos and I derive design goals from design outcomes. I don' tthink they are dumber or smarter, I think they are just doing the best they can given their jobs.
I get angry when I come across some kind of "here's a cool bit of lore" because everytime I see it it means I have to rewrite something from scratch. (current example: the BS that is going to be part of the death card in the new Deck of Many things, which I found out after I had preordered and is making me want to cancel my pre-order. all by itself. Not even kidding a little, it pisses me off that much.)
Because Lore is mine. They can have all the specific systems in the universe, all the crunch they want and they could even say that they require everyone to play the game this exact way, but...
... the world and the setting are mine, and i do not share the act of creation of my world or my lore with people I have never met and who do not play in my games.
I recognize that most people don't feel as strongly about it as I do, and that a lot of folks aren't as invested in what they create as I am. And that is cool. But I bring this up because someone would look at my world and think the exact same thing about my world building that I jsut said about the designers of D&D, and that everyone has said about them.
And *that* is the reason that they encourage homebrewing. Because ultimately, the dark secret is that homebrewing wis what hey are doing right now. Except their home is the baseline for the game, instead of just one person's table.
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Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
But they've given DMs a precision-engineered machine, built by dozens of the most skilled hands and minds in the industry, and they're telling you to get in there with a screwdriver and just mess around with this thing that you could never hope to create yourself (after all, isn't that why you buy the books?), and like, no? I'm not comfy doing that! I'll break something!!
I so do not see 5e as that, lol. I think I could write the whole game better. I bought the books because I needed to know what we were going to be using and adjust to it, since I voted to do so. I have created my own games. I've used the darn stuff they offered for free and built stuff on top of it and from it and taken it apart and put it back together a 100 times easily.
I kinda think the game might be worse without Cursed Rules in it. What do you think?
I think the rules were what they came up with at the time, and they have to deal with the degree of inertia and acceptance that has struck them.
I think creating a game of this size, in corporate structure, is a nightmare that never ends. I think the inherent biases of the folks involved lead them to overlook things and that like me they are curious to try new things out because nothing is more boring to a game designer than the "standard" "plain" "commonplace". Like most engineers, there is always an ith to fix something -- but you want to fix a new something, not really have to deal with the crap you figure is settled. D&D is very trapped by its own history in a lot of design senses, and then it is trapped by the different ways that previous design goals influenced the players. by their position and role as the market leader and by their position and role as the default, the most common point of entry and the most common point of reference. I think this design team is trapped by their own success, since a chunk of this team is the same folks who did the 2014 books.
So I don't think they created the cured rules to make folks homebrew -- I think they created them because they didn't have a better idea that they liked and that would fit with what they think of as "the game" at the time.
I am someone who loves to homebrew. I am a game mechanics nerd -- I collect the "systems and sub systems". I look at ethos and I derive design goals from design outcomes. I don' tthink they are dumber or smarter, I think they are just doing the best they can given their jobs.
I get angry when I come across some kind of "here's a cool bit of lore" because everytime I see it it means I have to rewrite something from scratch. (current example: the BS that is going to be part of the death card in the new Deck of Many things, which I found out after I had preordered and is making me want to cancel my pre-order. all by itself. Not even kidding a little, it pisses me off that much.)
Because Lore is mine. They can have all the specific systems in the universe, all the crunch they want and they could even say that they require everyone to play the game this exact way, but...
... the world and the setting are mine, and i do not share the act of creation of my world or my lore with people I have never met and who do not play in my games.
I recognize that most people don't feel as strongly about it as I do, and that a lot of folks aren't as invested in what they create as I am. And that is cool. But I bring this up because someone would look at my world and think the exact same thing about my world building that I jsut said about the designers of D&D, and that everyone has said about them.
And *that* is the reason that they encourage homebrewing. Because ultimately, the dark secret is that homebrewing wis what hey are doing right now. Except their home is the baseline for the game, instead of just one person's table.
So... is that a vote in favor of or against "Cursed Rules?"
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
But they've given DMs a precision-engineered machine, built by dozens of the most skilled hands and minds in the industry, and they're telling you to get in there with a screwdriver and just mess around with this thing that you could never hope to create yourself (after all, isn't that why you buy the books?), and like, no? I'm not comfy doing that! I'll break something!!
I so do not see 5e as that, lol. I think I could write the whole game better. I bought the books because I needed to know what we were going to be using and adjust to it, since I voted to do so. I have created my own games. I've used the darn stuff they offered for free and built stuff on top of it and from it and taken it apart and put it back together a 100 times easily.
I kinda think the game might be worse without Cursed Rules in it. What do you think?
I think the rules were what they came up with at the time, and they have to deal with the degree of inertia and acceptance that has struck them.
I think creating a game of this size, in corporate structure, is a nightmare that never ends. I think the inherent biases of the folks involved lead them to overlook things and that like me they are curious to try new things out because nothing is more boring to a game designer than the "standard" "plain" "commonplace". Like most engineers, there is always an ith to fix something -- but you want to fix a new something, not really have to deal with the crap you figure is settled. D&D is very trapped by its own history in a lot of design senses, and then it is trapped by the different ways that previous design goals influenced the players. by their position and role as the market leader and by their position and role as the default, the most common point of entry and the most common point of reference. I think this design team is trapped by their own success, since a chunk of this team is the same folks who did the 2014 books.
So I don't think they created the cured rules to make folks homebrew -- I think they created them because they didn't have a better idea that they liked and that would fit with what they think of as "the game" at the time.
I am someone who loves to homebrew. I am a game mechanics nerd -- I collect the "systems and sub systems". I look at ethos and I derive design goals from design outcomes. I don' tthink they are dumber or smarter, I think they are just doing the best they can given their jobs.
I get angry when I come across some kind of "here's a cool bit of lore" because everytime I see it it means I have to rewrite something from scratch. (current example: the BS that is going to be part of the death card in the new Deck of Many things, which I found out after I had preordered and is making me want to cancel my pre-order. all by itself. Not even kidding a little, it pisses me off that much.)
Because Lore is mine. They can have all the specific systems in the universe, all the crunch they want and they could even say that they require everyone to play the game this exact way, but...
... the world and the setting are mine, and i do not share the act of creation of my world or my lore with people I have never met and who do not play in my games.
I recognize that most people don't feel as strongly about it as I do, and that a lot of folks aren't as invested in what they create as I am. And that is cool. But I bring this up because someone would look at my world and think the exact same thing about my world building that I jsut said about the designers of D&D, and that everyone has said about them.
And *that* is the reason that they encourage homebrewing. Because ultimately, the dark secret is that homebrewing wis what hey are doing right now. Except their home is the baseline for the game, instead of just one person's table.
So... is that a vote in favor of or against "Cursed Rules?"
Um, let's go with "against".
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Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
But they've given DMs a precision-engineered machine, built by dozens of the most skilled hands and minds in the industry, and they're telling you to get in there with a screwdriver and just mess around with this thing that you could never hope to create yourself (after all, isn't that why you buy the books?), and like, no? I'm not comfy doing that! I'll break something!!
I so do not see 5e as that, lol. I think I could write the whole game better.
I mean, I don't really feel that way either, but I used to. And I think we're both older than a lot of people picking D&D up for the first time.
Again, I don't have an opinion on whether Cursed Rules are intentional or accidental. I mean, I do, but it isn't useful for anyone. Still, they do something. I'm inclined to think that the next edition, the "rules revision," will have intentional Cursed Rules in it. But, I'm not sure how the designers would've gathered the info about what the Cursed Rules accomplish. It's certainly not in their surveys or anything. So maybe not.
I would not say cursed rules are actually intentional, but there is a deliberate design decision that accounts for them. The fundamental issue is that they wanted to write 5e in casual language, avoiding the technical writing style you saw in 3e and 4e. This results in two things
It's hard to write clear rules. Technical writing styles exist for a reason.
It means your writers were probably not chosen for their technical skills, because people with technical skills tend to write in technical language.
Unsurprisingly, this results in rules that are poor from a technical standpoint. However, this doesn't mean Wizards was wrong. Yeah, the boardgaming and miniatures wargaming portion of the hobby would prefer tighter rules, but there are an awful lot of people out there who dislike math and technical language.
I would not say cursed rules are actually intentional, but there is a deliberate design decision that accounts for them. The fundamental issue is that they wanted to write 5e in casual language, avoiding the technical writing style you saw in 3e and 4e. This results in two things
It's hard to write clear rules. Technical writing styles exist for a reason.
It means your writers were probably not chosen for their technical skills, because people with technical skills tend to write in technical language.
Unsurprisingly, this results in rules that are poor from a technical standpoint. However, this doesn't mean Wizards was wrong. Yeah, the boardgaming and miniatures wargaming portion of the hobby would prefer tighter rules, but there are an awful lot of people out there who dislike math and technical language.
With the exception of 4e and a few others, RPG design is very vibes-based. You can get to mechanically tight by iteration, but D&D is just too big and sprawling to even playtest effectively in a reasonable amount of time.
It's a good point. Some of the most infamous Cursed Rules are the result of trying to force technicality into a framework where it doesn't belong, in order to achieve some semblance of balance.
But others really have nothing to do with that. Take the carrying capacity rules for example. They're not overly technical, but they result in carry loads that defy reason while also failing to impose either interesting limitations or true freedom. What's the point? An adjustment of the numbers would fix it, in either direction, without requiring a reduction in technicality or complexity. Or the ability for Goodberry to feed everyone for a whole day. That's as simple as it gets, but is anybody having fun because of it? Idk.
Obviously when you start getting into the particulars, some disagreement will emerge over what counts as a Cursed Rule. And that's another reason Cursed Rules exist: because one man's treasure is another man's trash, surely.
But others really have nothing to do with that. Take the carrying capacity rules for example. They're not overly technical, but they result in carry loads that defy reason while also failing to impose either interesting limitations or true freedom. What's the point? An adjustment of the numbers would fix it, in either direction, without requiring a reduction in technicality or complexity. Or the ability for Goodberry to feed everyone for a whole day. That's as simple as it gets, but is anybody having fun because of it? Idk.
Obviously when you start getting into the particulars, some disagreement will emerge over what counts as a Cursed Rule. And that's another reason Cursed Rules exist: because one man's treasure is another man's trash, surely.
I think the carrying rules started with the now variant encumbrance rules, which do impose meaningful limitations, and then they decided to simplify.
Goodberry is an artifact of simplification of the material component rules. Goodberry always provided a meal, but in 3.x and earlier it had a material component of 'freshly picked berries', which mostly made it irrelevant for providing food, because freshly picked berries are usually not available in any situation where survival is an issue to start with.
Sure. Point stands though, right? You try to run a survival arc one time with a nature caster in the party and it makes you realize hey, wait just a minute, this game is a mess.
The fact that it's a mess and it's still good is really the key to its success. If it was perfect, it would have no room for tinkering except by the most skillful of game masters. It would break easily. Those posts where someone allowed a broken 3rd party class and now they can't challenge their party anymore would be the default experience.
That is a non sequitur argument. If the game were so perfect that there was no way to tinker with it, there wouldn't be room for broken 3rd party content. Also, it's always been on the GM to determine whether or not to allow players to use 3rd party content in the first place.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Sure. Point stands though, right? You try to run a survival arc one time with a nature caster in the party and it makes you realize hey, wait just a minute, this game is a mess.
The fact that it's a mess and it's still good is really the key to its success. If it was perfect, it would have no room for tinkering except by the most skillful of game masters.
No, it really isn't. What this really shows is that the complaint is overblown. Yes, Goodberry breaks survival scenarios... but most players simply don't care, because they don't find survival scenarios fun in the first place so removing them from the game is no big loss.
It's funny how people complain about Goodberry but completely ignore the Outlander background, which in most situations does the same thing without even requiring magic.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It's funny how people complain about Goodberry but completely ignore the Outlander background, which in most situations does the same thing without even requiring magic.
The Outlander background gets a fair bit of flak, actually.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
It does? Because I see complaints about Goodberry on a very regular basis but Outlander almost never seems to come up.
I have seen it personally. I can see why some DMs might get in a twist over it. One of the PCs in the game I DM has it and occasionally uses it to no-sell foraging. Some DMs might hate that. I mostly just have a shrug about it. The only time I even address it at all is when another player asks to do the foraging encounters, since they are the 'outdoorsy' sort.
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DM mostly, Player occasionally | Session 0 form| Doctor/Published Scholar/Science and Healthcare Advocate/Critter/Trekkie/Gandalf with a Glock | He/Him/They/Them
I don't know as I'd call "Cursed Rules" deliberate as such, but I also wouldn't be surprised if the designers didn't go too far out of their way to occasionally leave jank in there. If for no other reason than any given rule/feature can only get so much design time, and if it isn't ready by the point that time is up it either gets cut or it gets pushed in the form it's in. Some half-baked rules get cut, and some get left in because the designers figure that even half-baked they're good enough, or they can serve as inspiration points for homebrew. And, much like you said, spark people into beginning the path of homebrew by giving them something to fix.
Again, don't think it's deliberate, because deliberately putting bad rules in your book is a great way to stop selling books. But the 2014 books were one giant experiment; the dev team "playtested", sure, but it would take a decade to playtest 5e close to properly and they had a couple of years. Nah. SO they threw a whole lotta stuff at the wall, kept what stuck, and didn't have time to see if some of the stuff that 'stuck' was already starting to peel and would've fallen off if given a bit more time. And if those things serve in the end as common onboardingf points for DMs learning how to fix/homebrew their game? Well hey, happy bonus.
I don't know as I'd call "Cursed Rules" deliberate as such, but I also wouldn't be surprised if the designers didn't go too far out of their way to occasionally leave jank in there. If for no other reason than any given rule/feature can only get so much design time, and if it isn't ready by the point that time is up it either gets cut or it gets pushed in the form it's in. Some half-baked rules get cut, and some get left in because the designers figure that even half-baked they're good enough, or they can serve as inspiration points for homebrew. And, much like you said, spark people into beginning the path of homebrew by giving them something to fix.
Or you have a version that's too good, and there's no time left to test anything complicated, so you hit it with the nerf stick, and hope it's not too awful. (A fate that could easily have befallen True Strike, for instance.)
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We've been in Playtesting Season for a while now, and every new revision is guaranteed to have at least one thing that you personally think is extremely stupid and bad. Many have wondered, is this just a lack of competence on display? Is this what happens when you base all your decisions on a popularity vote? Or what? And I'm here to not entirely answer that question. Because c'mon. I'm not a mind reader. What I'm here to do is examine a little piece of theory.
D&D has pretty much always, and definitely recently, prided itself on its flexibility. Every book has blurbs about "you should ignore rules you don't like," and "you should change the rules to better fit your play group," and "the rules serve you," and so on. But look. Aren't those platitudes?
Didn't this edition receive something like two years of playtesting? Weren't there dozens of people working on it? People with game design schooling? Doesn't it come from a long history of trials and errors, revisions and iterations? Wouldn't it be hubris for any DM to think they're smarter than this team?
But how many 5e games have you played where it's even possible for the DM to avoid homebrewing? I can't think of any. And furthermore, isn't it more fun to homebrew, at least a little? Don't DMs get a kick out of it? Don't players enjoy it? Doesn't it make games feel more real, feel more personal, and even feel more fair? Doesn't it make each new campaign that little bit more exciting? I think the designers know this. That's why they keep telling you to hack the game! But they've given DMs a precision-engineered machine, built by dozens of the most skilled hands and minds in the industry, and they're telling you to get in there with a screwdriver and just mess around with this thing that you could never hope to create yourself (after all, isn't that why you buy the books?), and like, no? I'm not comfy doing that! I'll break something!!
Enter the Cursed Rules.
We've all seen 'em. The Shield Master order-of-operations thing. The crappy scaling of Martial Arts damage. Freaking True Strike. There are plenty of Cursed Rules. And when you encounter one of these Cursed Rules, it makes you question the sanity of the designers of this game. It makes you question their skills. Their rationale. Whether they even played the game. And that's a good thing.
These people designed freaking True Strike. Even an amateur like me can see that True Strike is hot garbage, so maybe this thing isn't as perfect as it seemed. Maybe it's actually very flawed. I can hack a thing that's flawed. What am I gonna do, make it worse? People still love it, even though it's got freaking True Strike in it, so what are the odds I'm really going to ruin it with whatever thing I choose to do?
Now, am I saying the D&D design team are some kind of Machiavellian 4D-chess-playing geniuses who intentionally put in Cursed Rules for this purpose? No, c'mon, I'm not a mind reader. We've been over this! But I kinda think the game might be worse without Cursed Rules in it. What do you think?
Personally, I think that any rules that appear in a book should be functional. I'm fine with house rules, especially when it comes to customizing something for a particular game, but players and GMs should not be asked to come up with their own homebrew just to make a feat or spell into something that's actually functional. That's not "encouraging creativity," that's just the writers and editors failing to do their actual jobs. It's like Microsoft's infamous tendency to take known bugs in their programs and simply label them as "features" instead of fixing them.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I so do not see 5e as that, lol. I think I could write the whole game better. I bought the books because I needed to know what we were going to be using and adjust to it, since I voted to do so. I have created my own games. I've used the darn stuff they offered for free and built stuff on top of it and from it and taken it apart and put it back together a 100 times easily.
I think the rules were what they came up with at the time, and they have to deal with the degree of inertia and acceptance that has struck them.
I think creating a game of this size, in corporate structure, is a nightmare that never ends. I think the inherent biases of the folks involved lead them to overlook things and that like me they are curious to try new things out because nothing is more boring to a game designer than the "standard" "plain" "commonplace". Like most engineers, there is always an ith to fix something -- but you want to fix a new something, not really have to deal with the crap you figure is settled. D&D is very trapped by its own history in a lot of design senses, and then it is trapped by the different ways that previous design goals influenced the players. by their position and role as the market leader and by their position and role as the default, the most common point of entry and the most common point of reference. I think this design team is trapped by their own success, since a chunk of this team is the same folks who did the 2014 books.
So I don't think they created the cured rules to make folks homebrew -- I think they created them because they didn't have a better idea that they liked and that would fit with what they think of as "the game" at the time.
I am someone who loves to homebrew. I am a game mechanics nerd -- I collect the "systems and sub systems". I look at ethos and I derive design goals from design outcomes. I don' tthink they are dumber or smarter, I think they are just doing the best they can given their jobs.
I get angry when I come across some kind of "here's a cool bit of lore" because everytime I see it it means I have to rewrite something from scratch. (current example: the BS that is going to be part of the death card in the new Deck of Many things, which I found out after I had preordered and is making me want to cancel my pre-order. all by itself. Not even kidding a little, it pisses me off that much.)
Because Lore is mine. They can have all the specific systems in the universe, all the crunch they want and they could even say that they require everyone to play the game this exact way, but...
... the world and the setting are mine, and i do not share the act of creation of my world or my lore with people I have never met and who do not play in my games.
I recognize that most people don't feel as strongly about it as I do, and that a lot of folks aren't as invested in what they create as I am. And that is cool. But I bring this up because someone would look at my world and think the exact same thing about my world building that I jsut said about the designers of D&D, and that everyone has said about them.
And *that* is the reason that they encourage homebrewing. Because ultimately, the dark secret is that homebrewing wis what hey are doing right now. Except their home is the baseline for the game, instead of just one person's table.
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
Wyrlde.com
Free PDFs
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
So... is that a vote in favor of or against "Cursed Rules?"
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
Um, let's go with "against".
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
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I mean, I don't really feel that way either, but I used to. And I think we're both older than a lot of people picking D&D up for the first time.
Again, I don't have an opinion on whether Cursed Rules are intentional or accidental. I mean, I do, but it isn't useful for anyone. Still, they do something. I'm inclined to think that the next edition, the "rules revision," will have intentional Cursed Rules in it. But, I'm not sure how the designers would've gathered the info about what the Cursed Rules accomplish. It's certainly not in their surveys or anything. So maybe not.
I would not say cursed rules are actually intentional, but there is a deliberate design decision that accounts for them. The fundamental issue is that they wanted to write 5e in casual language, avoiding the technical writing style you saw in 3e and 4e. This results in two things
Unsurprisingly, this results in rules that are poor from a technical standpoint. However, this doesn't mean Wizards was wrong. Yeah, the boardgaming and miniatures wargaming portion of the hobby would prefer tighter rules, but there are an awful lot of people out there who dislike math and technical language.
With the exception of 4e and a few others, RPG design is very vibes-based. You can get to mechanically tight by iteration, but D&D is just too big and sprawling to even playtest effectively in a reasonable amount of time.
It's a good point. Some of the most infamous Cursed Rules are the result of trying to force technicality into a framework where it doesn't belong, in order to achieve some semblance of balance.
But others really have nothing to do with that. Take the carrying capacity rules for example. They're not overly technical, but they result in carry loads that defy reason while also failing to impose either interesting limitations or true freedom. What's the point? An adjustment of the numbers would fix it, in either direction, without requiring a reduction in technicality or complexity. Or the ability for Goodberry to feed everyone for a whole day. That's as simple as it gets, but is anybody having fun because of it? Idk.
Obviously when you start getting into the particulars, some disagreement will emerge over what counts as a Cursed Rule. And that's another reason Cursed Rules exist: because one man's treasure is another man's trash, surely.
I think the carrying rules started with the now variant encumbrance rules, which do impose meaningful limitations, and then they decided to simplify.
Goodberry is an artifact of simplification of the material component rules. Goodberry always provided a meal, but in 3.x and earlier it had a material component of 'freshly picked berries', which mostly made it irrelevant for providing food, because freshly picked berries are usually not available in any situation where survival is an issue to start with.
Sure. Point stands though, right? You try to run a survival arc one time with a nature caster in the party and it makes you realize hey, wait just a minute, this game is a mess.
The fact that it's a mess and it's still good is really the key to its success. If it was perfect, it would have no room for tinkering except by the most skillful of game masters. It would break easily. Those posts where someone allowed a broken 3rd party class and now they can't challenge their party anymore would be the default experience.
That is a non sequitur argument. If the game were so perfect that there was no way to tinker with it, there wouldn't be room for broken 3rd party content. Also, it's always been on the GM to determine whether or not to allow players to use 3rd party content in the first place.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
No, it really isn't. What this really shows is that the complaint is overblown. Yes, Goodberry breaks survival scenarios... but most players simply don't care, because they don't find survival scenarios fun in the first place so removing them from the game is no big loss.
It's funny how people complain about Goodberry but completely ignore the Outlander background, which in most situations does the same thing without even requiring magic.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The Outlander background gets a fair bit of flak, actually.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
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It does? Because I see complaints about Goodberry on a very regular basis but Outlander almost never seems to come up.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I have seen it personally. I can see why some DMs might get in a twist over it. One of the PCs in the game I DM has it and occasionally uses it to no-sell foraging. Some DMs might hate that. I mostly just have a shrug about it. The only time I even address it at all is when another player asks to do the foraging encounters, since they are the 'outdoorsy' sort.
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Eh, outlander pretty much works in situations where a straight up survival check would work -- which the outlander already has.
Interesting idea.
I don't know as I'd call "Cursed Rules" deliberate as such, but I also wouldn't be surprised if the designers didn't go too far out of their way to occasionally leave jank in there. If for no other reason than any given rule/feature can only get so much design time, and if it isn't ready by the point that time is up it either gets cut or it gets pushed in the form it's in. Some half-baked rules get cut, and some get left in because the designers figure that even half-baked they're good enough, or they can serve as inspiration points for homebrew. And, much like you said, spark people into beginning the path of homebrew by giving them something to fix.
Again, don't think it's deliberate, because deliberately putting bad rules in your book is a great way to stop selling books. But the 2014 books were one giant experiment; the dev team "playtested", sure, but it would take a decade to playtest 5e close to properly and they had a couple of years. Nah. SO they threw a whole lotta stuff at the wall, kept what stuck, and didn't have time to see if some of the stuff that 'stuck' was already starting to peel and would've fallen off if given a bit more time. And if those things serve in the end as common onboardingf points for DMs learning how to fix/homebrew their game? Well hey, happy bonus.
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Or you have a version that's too good, and there's no time left to test anything complicated, so you hit it with the nerf stick, and hope it's not too awful. (A fate that could easily have befallen True Strike, for instance.)